I carried something deep inside
my pocket like Frodo's ring

with the cruel gravity of Jupiter making every step beside you a slog through Russian snow

I never told you

I couldn't bear the thought
you wouldn't fight

and oh how valiant you were!

Even that French emperor that I have in pewter in a box in storage

would have thumped you on the shoulder

Oh tu as un cœur de lion!

yet a lion had already clamped its teeth into your shoulder

such pain

and you fought impossibly

until you finally fell into that shadowy shaft without knowing that I had carried a secret for eighteen months

that you, mon brave soldat, had only six months to live

A shofar blown in an empty synagogue

— a pursed squeeze of ethereal meaningless

is the sound of my abject failure to pull her back onto the boat

A choking cough in the dawn adhan reminds me of those gasps

the sinking and the stillness
and the defeat of my best intentions

regrets climbing atop
most things when I pray

blocking the sun as they stretch and writhe

but cold prayers are better than none and those moments pressed flat

fill my empty flask with the warmest of things

We can't take a thing on our tumbling rabbit hole trip into the opulence of recompense

Even our book of deeds exists there before a warm breeze lifts on that great day of winnowing

Yet you lie like Moses in a willow basket in the depths of the earth in that dress that made you look slimmer

Your nails are the blood of the Nile during that failed first plague and your eyeliner sits like Pharaoh's kohl

Nothing matters but what is written and the grace of the all graceful

yet a constellation of young stars
sit on your ring finger

and above your heart the name of Allah glows yellow from a pendant like the oil lamp of a lighthouse

I gulped to inhale her soul
as she sighed while it spilled

as the blood of birth

and I cried at the absence of her future

I reached to catch it before it slipped away
but these sin-slick hands couldn't grip such purity

What would I have done with it anyway?
Kept it like a genie to uncork whenever regrets weighed most?
Whenever my shame crept out?

It escaped faster than I had imagined
though no feather fell
or flutter caught my eye

into a spinning growing void in which only one word is ever said
and always in a whisper

You smile in a picture on a shelf
and whenever I pass I greet you

as a boy passing the waiting dog
that Dad had said he couldn't play with
until after homework

I salute you with a sigh that climbs a long ladder from a deep pain

though the Lord of all worlds
had slammed shut in my face that most unlovely door

leaving you in pearlescent light and me inside the shadows of a willow weeping

An eyebrow arches to hold aloft your eyes like Chinese lanterns glowing as they drift away
soon to fall

And no one but me will know
that I'd taken that photo on the very day
your left lung collapsed

cancer clutching like coal in a cave

Everything is out of place

a curiously dead wife on anyone's bed in a city long forgotten

her soul departing from an old people's home

lip hanging lower than it used to

new running shoes in the corner

disposable nappies next to a bra on an unused food tray

eyeliner on eyes that hadn't opened for days

cold skin in a room into which the sun streamed

morphine flowing through a tube into a life that had left

devotion from such an imperfect husband

who knew she'd hate her hair like that and stroked her fringe back into place

From your bed in the ward you saw a modest ribbon of pale sky through a window that could open only slightly, like your eyes

a high sky as achingly thin as the skin of your arms bruised like rain clouds

Yellowy eyes revealed what lips never uttered

a beaten acceptance that the sky will exist long after you do not

and your eyes fell on me like a child rushing for a tight hug

and mine swept you up like a father who'd failed to stop you tripping

Oh you patient soul who had never asked for more or complained of less

that same sky will also stretch above my grave

but until I fall into shadows I'll never forget you

an easy companion who said little during drives and nothing during pain

Night crawls like lizards
with tongues of opalescent horror

Sleep is a blanket on someone else's bed

and I jolt and gasp like she had

connected by that plastic tube
to a life finally withdrawn

Sleep is torn from my lungs which choke on fears that close around me as coal dust

and all I see in the dark are the
worst things she suffered

from cancer's tongues of horror

Then radiance reaches from your woken soul and you recite Quran over me
like a Southern faith healer

with laying on of hands

They slither away from the light you've conjured and I sleep oh I sleep

Daylight memories appear as camera flashes

petty poltergeists easily banished

Yet darkness always follows day as an anxious housemaid

Memories slip their skins and crawl from discarded scales again where they shouldn't

The Good Lord drowned you in dreams of our best times

I couldn't save you from that clutching thing that had stolen far too much

yet I am caught in the happy moment when you bobbed on the surface for three sunlit seconds

saw me from eyes that had closed forever, I swear, and blew me a kiss

with a hand from your lips that had forgotten how to sound even the smallest words

before sinking back into the depths of the peace that enclosed you as a shroud

Uselessly I watched you
glide with her
holding her tightly
while she sank into your embrace

You drew her breath
made her heart race
placed a hand upon her shoulder

It hurt

You cast me a you-can't-do-anything glance
and I winced at how light-footed you are

It was obvious
you have done this often
thief with a devilish grin
crusher of hopes

When you left with your arm around her
you looked back smugly
You're used to getting what you want
Your gloating broke me

I curse you cancer
brutal romancer
irresistible lover
****** good dancer

You noticed that I was torn
and began pulling edges together
Stitching them
O God it hurt

Stitch by stich You closed wounds
while I looked away with gritted teeth

but said, more more

They say pain is the well of wisdom
I have drunk a full bucket
and am quenched

but I want more … please

Great Healer most merciful
see my older brother

take Your needle and thread …

Sleep disrobes
shyly with the
coyest eyes

Tonight she is early

She takes my hand
and we waltz

kisses my eyelids
my forehead

I am unglued

We are one

lost

I reach for her
before dawn

I feel the warmth
where she lay

She is gone

I wash and bend
to pray

to thank  

She kisses my eyelids
breathes on
my neck

Has she sensed
that my mind is
with another?

She slips from
the room again

I feel her

close

gone

A caliph trembles at the sound of aircraft
like a dachshund beaten too much while
his pack snap and bite and **** their legs
to *** on a better world

Their state is a chewed thighbone
covered in flies yet they mint coins
in gold and silver and praise God as they
throw effeminate teenagers off rooftops

A Turkish fisherman with a large shoe
stuffs cash into a pregnant pocket
and crams frightened souls into the shoe
which sinks on the horizon like the sun

Assassins have the crescent moon
in their left hands ***** pictures
on their phones and tight vests
leaking lava

She searched for tips on eyeliner
the day she erupted as a volcano
leaving her sheer blouse to mourn
at home on the ironing board

The world has become as mad
as Napoleon in stiletto heels
cross-legged on the back
of a tortoise singing Hey Jude

My soul is an empty crisps packet
caught in the sour mood of a shouting wind

She snarled and I careened
— a drunken trapeze artist

That moody spirit let me fall upon a mountain top
at the feet of a brick of a black man shouting

he has seen the promised land!

My heart cracked as an egg that slipped from the bench:
his people still stumble in chains

My shouting mistress carried me aloft and I fell
in the slit of a rock upon another summit
where the finger of God scratched Hebrew into stone

The wizard’s face burned as the Lord’s shadow
passed before him as the orange tears of a volcano

I know, I heard him call up to the Almighty. They’ll
melt their earrings and innocence and cast a calf

Beneath the roar of my mistress’s temper I heard the
wizard plead like a lawyer, forgive them Lord

They don’t yet know

That temper carried my dizzy soul to another peak and
I beheld a young man slap the Devil on his left cheek

Get thee hence, Satan, he said, rejecting a throne
offered by that beauty with the stinging face

I heard the wind hiss and I cringed awaiting another crash

I broke my fall like a child off a bed and marvelled
at the sight —Oh God what a sight!

ten thousand prostrating candles hurling shadows from a cave
and ripping sleep off a man with the bugle command, Recite!

My soul my soul! I am overcome. I begged the wind to return me
to my home and she took pity and swept me in a final gust

Oh the Lord is the flinger of things
          the bringer of stings

the terrifier
          the hypnotizer
                    magnifier

          a spurner
                    a burner
                             the great turner

I am burned
I have turned
and painfully learned!

I cling to the Lord of all ages
          sender of sages
                    the payer of wages

I hold tight

Live and love right

I cling

I cling

I bent the red sky
the shepherd’s delight
into a triangle for dangling
outside my door on a string

I hit it like a bell when I thought
I wanted a chime for the wind
with a Chinese sound

but you came

You entered my life on a dawn
when the clouds burned
and your eyes were hot coals

You came in the wind you
were the wind and you
startled my soul

and when it said wowwww
you lifted that word to
the heavens and He heard

I drained the sky into a tea cup
yet you smelled of coffee
and I should have known better

You haven’t sinned against me
and you’ve held me aloft as an
Olympic torch in a Spanish parade

You have covered me in kisses
like a newborn ‘tho I’m old with
eyes which protest at morning light

You have read me Qur’an and
dripped prayers and scattered
wisdom on my head while I’ve slept

You have laughed at my jokes as
though I’m funny when I know
I’m a gravel road at high speed

Your eyes still set me ablaze and I
roar as a bonfire made from the
branches of the happiest trees

And wisps of flame and sparks climb
into the jealous sky while I ****** at them
to stop them carrying away your name

She holds the sun in her right hand

And the deepest ocean pours
from her left as a Niagara of
dark expectations

flowing to me with words
that soar and swoop pecking
and clawing

Oh how I need the moon and
pull her close in a feigned kiss
while my hand creeps like a lizard

to set it free like that guy released after
thirteen years waiting for the chair

Oh how that embrace has wrecked me
as a car that followed too close

I pulled her tight to steal
what she had herself snatched
when the stars weren’t looking

Her breath was red wine and I drank
and the weight of her breast on my arm
crushed my resistance

and I loved her again oh as a universe

and let her keep it tucked away

We rode to Ta’if on a flying carpet
— a Toyota with a missing hubcap

sweeping through  fattened clouds
which clung to the hilltops like grazing bison

arriving on the otherworldly plateau that wore
the death shroud of an old hermit’s mystery

which our Prophet reached in sandals as ******
as the deck of a Nantucket whaling ship

Arabian Himalayas. He climbed like a yak
and the Lord strengthened his steps

Our taxi driver — as lost as the cheque in the mail —
poked at his satnav and called his mates

The Almighty’s beloved followed the angel and
never lost his way. He strained with pain

Our driver’s mirrored eyes intruded while we
held hands on the back seat and yawned

The Lord smiled down upon his aching friend
and eased the pain in cramping calves

A sagging mosque now hunches where the ignorant
had cast away the chance of a lifetime

Oh think if they had taken him in — Medina
would sit as a happy king on a mountain throne

I immortalised my love in a photo in that mosque
praying as a saint where our hero had struggled

I adore my captured shaikha and the memory
of when we followed in the footsteps of our Prophet

When you come
you’ll reach to take what
I’ve clutched tight

You’ve done it a lot
— especially lately

You did it to that unsuspecting lady
when she stepped off the bus
on Philpotts Road

To that sleeping girl
with the mousy hair in
the children’s ward

To her father three months later

To my own dad while he prayed
by the bed and slumped

To that old pope who shook
like a wet dog in a sou’wester

I read again last week how you visited
the homes of those who wouldn’t
splash blood on their doors

Now that’s something!

I know what you want and I’m onto you

When you come I’ll be ready — I hope
and I’ll hand it to you without protest

But I have a request, if I may, and I hope
you’ll ask on my behalf:

Please don’t visit her before you call on me

I am adrift on an upturned hull
lamenting misfortune

Her rushing words swamped my hopes
before I could turn headlong into them

I hate the horizon — that line of horror
That lifeless circle

My head spins beneath a heavy sky
which pins me like a sweating wrestler

Flattened and breathless I wait
for the wave that will drown me

All is lost

It does not come. The wind dies
and her eyes soften

She is calming

You are a mystery

I have fathomed
And know

You glide in black
The walking darkness
A moonless night

The stars I see
Are my universe
And they look with love

Their warmth touches
And a stretched hand
Offers something
Immortal

You

Golden soul
Opaque in velvet

The invisible obvious

Pious perfection

Glide in black

Wickedness dances like a Chinese dragon
held high on poles by the grinning

It curls its tail and snakes around the minds
of admirers who see beauty in its gaping jaws

Flaccid and incapable, this billowing beast
intoxicates and seduces the frustrated and resentful

It dances in Kirachi, hoodwinks in Bradford,
and slips into the dark places in distracted minds

— this infernal idea more bilious and mephitic
than a komodo’s bite

It dances wildly in the confused thoughts of lost boys
who haven’t noticed its cunning wink

They sway and rock — utterly taken
far more mistaken — until stilled by the slap of death

Is it in that ulcer that recurs in my mouth?
That scaly patch on my right thigh?
Blood on the loo paper?

Is it in the swerve around angry brake lights?
The crushed metal womb?
Will I be removed as a stillborn?

Is it closer than tomorrow?
Will it end a dream?
Better still, a prayer?

Do I deserve a warning?
— Oh God don’t let it catch me by surprise
         let me say goodbye … and sorry

Great whales’ hearts thud
Allah … Allah
Eight times
Each grey
Minute

The hummingbird calls
Faster, much faster
The name in
A whir of
Acclamation

Knuckly stiff fingers
Count misbaha beads
In resin while
The mind strokes
Each for a second

A baby’s colic cry
And a mother’s
Soft shushing
Hold a meaning
Understood

The aches of the
Lonely and penitent
Are never felt
By only
One

In everything lives
The memory of
An echo of that
First word
“Be”

I wanted to write a poem
Of You
That does not
Include me
But my first word here was
I and I
Want to say I’m sorry
But that’s also about me

You Oh Lord
Are beyond words
Anyway
Even the prettiest
Are shabby
Compared to Your Heart
Of love

Even words that sound
The same
As their meaning –
Scrumptious, Graceful
Sweetheart –
Are clumsy and ugly
Compared to
Your name

Words as fragrant
As their flowers –
Carnations, violets,
Goldenrods,
Dahlias –
Wither as weeds
When Your warmth
Radiates as midday
From the pages of Your Book

A poem of You
Needs only one word
Or ninety-nine
And it is finished

What did it take?

A beautiful boy packed tight
With no hint of a man’s chin
By his dad who
Kissed him goodbye
With a hope of seeing him later

What did he know?

Carrying a sunburst in canvas
To strangers who never noticed
That their end stood five-feet-two
With a running nose
And a mind full of his mum

What did he think?

Avoiding all eyes as he stood
Among them with a small chest
That felt ready to explode
With the pressure of keeping
A secret for moments more

What would he think?

His life now a curling photo on a shelf
In a home where a family once laughed
And dust on a street where people still
Buy drinks, phone covers and fruit

Sipping beauty
And coffee

Children and mums
In pieces

The deaf

The blind

And torn

Closer to the God
Who loves
Innocence

A smell of hate
And heat
Survived

The
Angry blink

That 17

Could not

A Child
Caught a thing
Meant for another
It flew yet wasn’t a bird
It whistled
She never heard

It tore her dress
Of blue cotton
And seven lives
Which must wait
Until Paradise
To be mended

As I beckoned to the horizon and plucked the rising sun
Swallowed it and gulped the Atlantic to cool my burning throat
You spoke to my pride from inside a breadcrumb and said be smaller

Like Alice I shrank as I spun and became nothing … almost
I felt my heart swell and lift me as a balloon
To float through a vista of Your wonderland

Shaytan murmured
Write a poem about her!
I started
Words flowed
And were good

A muse! Such allure!

“You came and stood close
And I so wished my eyes
Weren’t red
From writing
My lecture
Late at night”

Allah said
Don’t type any more

So I didn’t

It wasn’t good

I dragged the cursor
Across the rest
With restraint and
What-ifs
Then tapped

Delete

In a desert midnight no darker than dawn
With cloudless heavens evident and stretching
To the edges of Bedouins’ minds and ours
Where owls govern with Your permission

You plunged a mighty fist deep
Into the heart and gripped a molten rag
And pulled it into a peak of crags
In which the **** You wanted grew

With a rush of wind you shaped that
Tear into a world-sized hollow to shelter
A man and a starfilled future for any who
Might accept what tugged at him that night

You once said Be! and time commenced
But earlier you had chosen from first
Until final a stream of Rusul and You placed
In that cleft the last Rasul alone but never

And in the radiance of a challenging word
Your spirit whose wings dripped pearls
Asked the silent one who sailed in prayer
To revolve the world on a different axis

Running feet across the earth carried him
To the comfort of arms that felt a beating
Chest bursting with ten million truths and her
Assurances trounced the whisperer’s last ditch

Words of mercy flow around us through a gentle
Heart in a stone cavity in the shade of a night
Without shadows beneath a cloudless cover
Which owls rule ... for a shrinking time

Shaytan winks

Within …

a market
a boy
a vest
two wires
a second
a hole
a mistake
a crime

When I let my eyes

fall
           into
                       its
                               wisdom

I don’t hear my voice
inside but

an angelic Lily Afshar
playing guitar with her eyes
closed

gently

and singing

note perfect

in the Irish flute voice
of that shaven-headed girl
who tore a photo of
some pope

The dancing of meaning
inside somewhere
changes me like …

nothing I can describe

and I can’t say
what I want except
to be prophetwise
and to gain Your smile

So I read and

sink
             within
                           its
                                    magic

You owned that second
when I could do
nothing

You ruled the world
as the road shrank
in my eyes

You Oh Allah
were my seatbelt
which held

You were the airbag
that loved me
in a flash

You were all and above
when I slid
as nothing

You whispered hush
and steel noise and glass
complied

You oh Allah
took no life there
nor let me

You control the heavens
earth and in-between
and You decide

Can I ever repay
You for a blink
of lasting life?

An email flew from a
Graceless yesterday
Lodging deep
And he groaned
Falling forward
Staring at a portent

He pulled the arrow’s shaft
And a trickle of pain
Ran down his exposed breast
But he pressed
His palm and prayed

Oh Allah what have I done?
Have I not paid
Enough?

You have paid a full price
And justice asks
For nothing now

He read and tears fell
Upon his keyboard
And he thanked
The one who shot for
Aiming so well

A dove flew from his fingers
Returning with
Noah’s sign and
He sighed
Giving thanks
And embraced truth

Heaven here
and happiness

Faces like coffee
Hearts of chocolate

I remember and hum

Sleeping on pillows
not walking through fire

You remember and sing

My house is a hole

I hold a photograph
and cry for you

How can I live
alone?

My house is a hole

I climb in to search
and find fragments

I hold your hand
which seeps

Daughter of the Rom

Neck                       smooth
Jaw                        strong
Lips                                                                           mmm, soft to kiss?
Nose                       strong and long
Lashes                    long and dark          
Brows                     dark and thick        
Tresses                   thick and wild
Wild?
Oh, her eyes!          Her eyes!
    wild
       black
            shining
               black
                 deep
                     black
                        mysterious
                           black
                              frightening
                                 black
                                    loving
                                      black
                                          beautiful!

I sit with Sylvia Plath
open.

Thunder tears my ideas
with the rip sound of newspaper.
It rains a cold shower
lit only by Hollywood B-grade lightning flashes.

Old spouting overflows. Waters spill;
a forgotten bath with taps left on.

Winds tug at washing that’s pegged tight. They
tangle soaked sheets around the line with
noisy bluster.

I sit with Sylvia Plath
open.

Listening to her voice?

Life, I stand on your bank’s edge, frightened of a
slip that might bring a struggle I could not win.
You flow by with no effort. I envy you.
You swirl as if some magic occurs within your darkest green
―  the colour of the elm’s fullness during twilight.
You flow forever, past. I have little to offer but
three silver coins and my hope that you will accept them
with my anguished prayers.
Let them sink through your swiftness to your stillness.
Let them join others’ gifts
to clothe your bed in a radiant coverlet you have earned.

I know you, Jenny.
Your beauty betrays you.
What other woman has hair of
fine-spun gold thread
and long-lashed eyes of sapphire perfection?

Visible through white silk, your ******* and hips
lure me towards golden-freckled alabaster arms.

I’ve known your name all my life.
Now I meet you, smiling shyly as you bathe.

You’ll not get me, water spirit.

They say you wait
in wind-wild streams and lonely pools
for weaker souls than I
to surrender to your enchantment.

You beckon lovers in
to greet your body; to love you.

They say you
coil weeds around hopeful lovers’ ankles and pull them
down, white cold, into black depths.
You show their drowning eyes
the hideous crone you really are: Jenny Green Teeth.

But I see no crone, only youthful perfection
radiant in high sun’s glory.

Oh Jenny, your beauty and smile draw me.
Will you take me? Love me? Drown me?
Let us speak in whispers. Touch our fingers. Lips?

I cannot believe what they say. I cannot. I do not.

The water … so cold.

I flew a kite with a key
so You could light the sky
and flick a bounding bolt
towards my darkened home

You drew a storm from the sea
and rattled window panes
with gusts of supremacy that flung
my back door from its jam

Spiralling allure stings these eyes
which watch through squints while
tempests tear comfort from my chair
and split my mirror into slivers

Gleefully you score pictures
on my white bones
with a sharp nail
and wipe Indian ink
into the minute
scratches.
I watch your scrimshaw emerge
with disinterest
until I see your artwork capture the
moment when an upturned hull
slips beneath the waves
to begin its long descent.
I recognise the ship
as that of which I had proudly
proclaimed myself captain

Albrecht Dürer’s
brush and ink
on tinted blue

Gently touching
long-fingered
“Praying Hands”

Stirring religious
veneration and piety
since he drew them

My pale
imitation
performed each night

Freckled hands
stubby fingers
chewed fingernails

Stirring divine
forgiveness and love
each time I bow my head

Bullets speak differently
when they meet someone new.
They scream “thwack!”
when they strike bone.
They shout “pthumpff!”
when they slap into thick muscle.
They squeal “pffit!”
when they pass through emptier flesh.
Best of all, they hiss “pzinnggg!” to themselves
when they find
no-one to talk with.

What do they say

when they introduce

a new friend

to

death?

You never felt snow tighten your skin with a sting
You never searched for the shore from the crest of a wave
You never grinned at the gait of a penguin
You never saw a whale’s grey fluke sink after rising
You never breathed in coffee’s warm rich aroma
You never heard the clearing of a smoker’s throat
You never saw headlights peer through dawn fog
You never smiled at an American accent
You never waited in a queue at the bank
You never cringed at the words of a driving instructor
You never sat and failed a biology test
You never kicked a football across the road
You never changed batteries in a tv remote
You never emptied the lawn-mower catcher
You never rushed to catch a bus and missed it
Yet exulted He chose you
Praise and glory to Him
Picked you from this world
And for it
The last in the line
The path straight to follow
To Him high above all
Alhamdulillah!